So says David Rendall in his online manifesto, The Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness.
How do I love this man? Let me count the ways.
Here is a picture of my youngest, complete with snazzy blue fingernails and a cute new hair cut. I love having a daughter, and she is teaching me many new things.
Both my daughter and I have been blessed with lots of hair, which gives us fits sometimes but which we generally take for granted. Imagine how hard it would be, especially for a young girl or woman, not to have any hair?
Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to children under the age of 18 who have lost their hair, most of them because of a condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. My 12-year-old daughter has just donated her own hair, and you can, too. Here’s how.
I had a good lunch today with a bunch of martial arts and marketing people, with whom I have remarkably little in common. Our state has just legalized a certain activity, and these people are poised to get in on the ground floor and make some money out of it. I have no idea why they invited me along, except that I know a couple of them and we like each other. Nor did I really have anything to contribute to the animated conversation, except to cheer them on.
You know that comic, “Rose is Rose,” in which the mother, Rose, has a punked-out alter-ego named Vicki who wears a leather mini and rides a motorbike? Who craves rattle-snake chili and sports a tattoo?
That was me today. Vicki the Biker Chick.
Karen over at Working Girl had another good post about networking this week, and gives some really good advice, including this: anyone can network, anywhere. She also makes the very good point that job-hunting should be fun. Well, she actually makes that point in today’s post, but it’s true. Job searching is damn hard work, and it’s very easy to become bitter, grim, and warlike about it.
The problem is that most employers aren’t really looking for bitter, grim, and warlike people.
Even more importantly, that isn’t any way to live, period. After all, life is what happens when you’re waiting around for the next thing to happen. Life is what happens while you’re still looking for a job.
Get out there and network. Not because it’s good for your job prospects (though it is) but because it’s good for you. So put down those sad old cupcakes , gas up that Harley, and go out and get yourself some fun!
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You may need to watch this one TWICE.
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
(If video is loading too slowly, you may link to it directly by clicking here. )
One of my dear friends directs an organization that works with inner city youth.
These young people are often battered with repeated failures, but Chris believes in them, even when no one else does. He encourages them to believe in themselves, too.
“Always Begin Again,” he tells them. Over and over.
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I’m helping a woman finish her latest book. She’s old enough to be my grandmother, but whizzes around the internet like a pro and still hikes in the Andes. She sent me an email yesterday, along with the latest installment of her manuscript.
“This is so HARD,” she wrote.
‘But I have a sign up,” she continued, “that says ‘Failure can not tolerate persistence.” Got it from a wonderful book called The War of Art.’
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Andy is home. He called me today, and he sounded much better. People have taken good care of him, so he was calling around to check in, thank everyone. His client had paid his hotel bill last night, even though he hadn’t managed to finish their show. He added that Phillip has had some good days while he was gone, but that he himself hit another rough patch, coming home this afternoon to the empty house.
But he already has lots of things set up, lots of meetings with lots of people, for his business and to go over the estate, legal and financial things. A lot of mail had piled up while he was gone, too. I could hear him shuffling through it. He listed some of it for me: Paperwork about benefits. Insurance information for COBRA.
And the death certificate finally came.
“And, maybe,” he paused, “a grief counselor or something. That might be good.”
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There’s a quote on scrap of paper on my desk that I’ve been trying to decide what to do with. It keeps getting shuffled to the top of my piles. I heard it last fall from an arborist who was speaking to our group about how badly our area’s trees had suffered from a year of severe drought, last spring’s late freeze, and a summer of record-setting heat.
Then he smiled. “But, enough gloom and bad news. I recommend, as all of us do who have the perpetual gardener’s heart: replant next spring!”
You may already have read “Invisible Mother,” (text below). As best as I can tell it’s been circulating online since at least 2005, via email, message boards, and dozens and dozens of blogs — but it is always credited to a nameless author.
Because she’s invisible. Get it?
I do not like to post things without an artist’s permission, much less without attribution. That’s called “plagiarism,” and is a form of theft.
Nevertheless, the hundreds of postings by hundreds of women all happily conspiring with the invisible author to keep her that way is wonderfully ironic, quite aside from the funny loveliness of the piece itself.
(more…)
Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident—all those epithets that strike right at our femininity.
So begins an article on Women in Leadership, in which eleven women from different backgrounds tell their own stories about how they arrived at the place we call “success.” Read it!
Creative Commons photo by Meretsoleil2
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While I do not love every word written (or philosophy espoused) by Marianne Williamson, I do love these words:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
-Marianne Williamson
Creative Commons Photo by estherase
Well, that was a strange little interlude.
It seems my predecessor wasn’t quite so eager to resign after all, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem except that the Board of Directors wasn’t quite sure they could do (ANYTHING) without her, either. So I decided they’d have to do without me instead, and here I am.
The “no succession plan” scenario is, unfortunately, far too common in the nonprofit world (most churches require retiring ministers to leave the congregation entirely, for this very reason). Perhaps this Board will do a better job next time; for my part, I suppose I’ll chalk it up to learning how to fail faster; I was just glad I saw the no-win situation for what it was as soon as I did, and got out before there were any actual murders.
My friend Emily has asked me to guest-host her “Rocky Road of Love” blog for the next week or so (starting Monday) while she is in PARIS doing some research (she’s a writer, and does that sort of thing.) I think she mainly wants to see me get off my dark-night-of-the-soul butt, but it’s very kind of her and I think it will be a lot of fun. Stay tuned!
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